Noah Schaffer earned a doctorate on User Experience (UX) in digital games at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He is now an Executive UX Strategist for Human Factors International. Noah has done consulting for Citibank, Standard Bank of South Africa, Research In Motion, REI, Best Buy, Cabela’s, World Bank, and others. He teaches three of HFI’s courses on UX. He also co-edited, Game Usability: Advancing the Player Experience.

The other night my wife and I were cooking dinner. We decided to try using a new app in order to find a new recipe. Unfortunately, this app was so poorly designed that it was practically impossible to use. Anyone could have designed that app better, right? Wrong. It’s hard to design something to be easy to use. And there is a science behind why it's so hard.